| dc.description.abstract | This book introduces particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology starting from
experiment. It provides a unified view of these fields, which is needed to answer our
questions to the Universe–a unified view that has been lost somehow in recent years
due to increasing specialization.
This is the second edition of a book we published only three years ago, a book
which had a success beyond our expectations. We felt that the recent progress on
gravitational waves, gamma ray and neutrino astrophysics deserved a new edition
including all these new developments: multimessenger astronomy is now a reality.
In addition, the properties of the Higgs particle are much better known now than
three years ago. Thanks to this second edition we had the opportunity to fix some
bugs, to extend the material related to exercises, and to change in a more logical
form the order of some items. Last but not least, our editor encouraged us a lot to
write a second edition.
Particle physics has recently seen the incredible success of the so-called standard
model. A 50-year long search for the missing ingredient of the model, the Higgs
particle, has been concluded successfully, and some scientists claim that we are
close to the limit of the physics humans may know.
Also astrophysics and cosmology have shown an impressive evolution, driven
by experiments and complemented by theories and models. We have nowadays a
“standard model of cosmology” which successfully describes the evolution of the
Universe from a tiny time after its birth to any foreseeable future. The experimental
field of astroparticle physics is rapidly evolving, and its discovery potential appears
still enormous: during the three years between the first and the second edition of this
book gravitational waves have been detected, an event in which gravitational waves
were associated to electromagnetic waves has been detected, and an extragalactic
source of astrophysical neutrinos has been located and associated to a gamma-ray
emitter. | en_US |
